Black lives should also matter when the killer is black: Phillip Morris

I'm still waiting on the rallies.

I'm still waiting on fed-up people who are down with the cause. I'm still waiting on social justice activists to lie in the streets, disrupt commerce and protest ad nauseam the killings of black men.

I'm still waiting for a community willing to rise up and act as if it really gives a damn about six people shot - three fatally - in a barbershop massacre on the evening of Feb. 3rd.

Where's the rage, folks?

I'm still waiting on people willing to demonstrate that they really believe black lives matter. When will they march through the streets of Cleveland, East Cleveland, Warrensville Heights, on those avenues and into the alleys where black men routinely shoot, stab and beat one another to death over the most trivial of slights.

I'm waiting for the same level of angry protests, the looting, the despair, the angry gnashing of teeth that happen when a conflict involves a white cop and a black suspect, who dies. Let's be consistent - all black lives matter.

Or, do they?

Do black lives matter less when the killer comes in the same skin color as the deceased? Or do they simply matter more when the killer is a white cop in a blue uniform? What is the convoluted racial arithmetic here?

Ferguson, Missouri, helps inform this toxic conundrum. The smoldering furor that continues to surround the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, at the hands of Darren Wilson, a white former Ferguson police officer, will remain a part of the conversation for some time.

Brown's death serves to force us further into highly uncomfortable and critical conversations. But in order for these candid conversations to be useful they must involve some confession and painful self-recognition.

In a speech at Georgetown University last week, FBI Director James Comey made a very telling reference to Ferguson. He didn't mince words. He talked about "hard truths" that needed to be acknowledged and addressed.

"Everyone's a little bit racist," he said, quoting from a Broadway musical, "Avenue Q."

"But racial bias isn't epidemic in law enforcement any more than it is epidemic in academia or the arts.

"But something happens to people in law enforcement. Many of us develop different flavors of cynicism that we work hard to resist because they can be lazy mental shortcuts," Comey said.

Translated: Many officers - white and black - must constantly fight the instinct to racially profile simply because experience leads them to be hypersensitive to the movement and the threat posed by black males.

FBI directors don't talk like that. But Comey took it a step further. He was curious to know the full extent of fatal outcomes between police and black Americans. When he ordered his staff to provide him with data on the number of blacks shot by police in America each year, it couldn't. The information is not kept.

That's the shocking confession. That's the candid opening that offers a useful way forward.

"The first step to understanding what is really going on in our communities and in our country is to gather more and better data related to those we arrest, those we confront for breaking the law and jeopardizing public safety, and those who confront us," Comey said.

Which brings us back to the African-American community and the urgent need to see a much higher premium placed on all lives lost. It's not just tragic incidents like this month's barbershop massacre, or the five lives gunned down in a home invasion on the city's East Side in November.

It's the local (and national) body count that goes up daily without a whimper of neighborhood concern or any sustained community outrage. That's the confession that's needed from the black side of this equation. Too many African-Americans act as if they don't care or have a meaningful say in the matter.

Yes, black lives matter. But black lives must not matter only when the hand holding the gun is white. Yes, police reforms are needed. But, ultimately, law enforcement isn't the root of the problem.

The complex root of the criminal problem that threatens both law enforcement and African-Americans trapped in poverty, is the greatly weakened state of the black family and continuing cycles of punishing economic futility. This leads to the dangerous and criminal mindset of far too many fatherless young black males. This reality is what breeds barbershop killers.

Who can - or will - teach young boys before they become criminals that all lives matter?

When will communities begin to hold themselves accountable for the carnage?

When will that rally be held?

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